Vlad Gets a Cat
by JadeRabbyt
Summary: Everybody's favorite villain grapples with asinine store clerks and smartmouth secretaries as he tries to find his way through the city that never sleeps. Newest episode: Pity the Pipsqueek!
1. Vlad Gets a Cat

Vlad Gets a Cat

By JadeRabbyt

A/N: Let's just say that I don't subscribe to the 'dignified' version of Vlad depicted in most stories around here. Let's also say that I don't own Vlad or Danny or yadda yadda yadda... Don't sue!

Vlad Masters, through an unfortunate series of misadventures involving a cabbie, a large angry thug, and an overabundance of available witnesses, found himself ducking into a pet store in New York City to ask for directions. It killed him to do it, of course. Vlad was on his way to a VERY IMPORTANT MEETING, but the streets were packed with homicidal cabbies and it was either the pet store, the liquor store, or Nails R Us, and the liquor store was way too tempting. So Vlad chose the pet store.

He pushed open the glass door to be greeted by the infuriatingly nonchalant tinkle of a bell. At the counter, a pizza-faced kid looked up from a magazine. "Hello, sir! Let me know if I can help you."

"Actually, I just--"

A litter of puppies in a cage at Vlad's elbow started yapping insanely. The teen at the counter shrugged his deafness. After a moment, Vlad managed to unclench his fists long enough to approach the little twerp.

"Do you know the Cray Building?" he asked, sparing an ugly glance at some brightly colored jingle-ball dog toys.

"Oh, you mean the big gray one on sixth and fifth?"

"Sure." To Vlad's knowledge, they were all big and grey, and every street was a mess. "Can you tell me how to get there?"

Pizza-face stifled a laugh. "Not really. The building was condemned and knocked down a couple weeks ago." He laughed at Vlad's wide-eyed stare of horror, having a little amusement at expense of the stupid tourist. Vlad caught the joke after a second and glared daggers at the kid. He hoped this place had a good medical plan.

"Just kidding," the kid chuckled. "You can walk to it from here."

Pizza-face gave him the necessary instructions, which, in spite of his stupidity, seemed clear enough. Still, Vlad added a mental note to come back and destroy him later. No sense in letting this kind of thing go unpunished. As he walked out the door, awakening the little bell once again, he called good-day to the kid and went skulking out into the chill winter air in search of the Cray.

Walking was not fun.

In principle, Vlad was exactly the sort of guy who would love New York. There was a busy, selfish air to the jerks who shoved each other along on the sidewalks. People walked against the traffic light, nearly getting run over by maniacal taxies, and the general populace, save for the sheepish tourists, didn't care one way or the other for each other's well being. Subways, packed to the brim with sweat and fatigue, ran beneath museums and art exhibits where the pretentious upper class might strut its artificial sophistication, while wide-eyed students in the insomniatic city glimpsed hopeless ideals that would inevitably be tempered and compromised by harsh reality.

In the abstract, Vlad loved all that great stuff. He'd taken several vacations in New York and enjoyed them immensely. The problem was that, this time, he was not in a limo cruising around Times Square with a martini and an expensive agenda. He was dragging his feet through muck-slick sidewalks, getting bumped up against by every lowly cretin and pickpocket in the entire infernal city. If not for the one-hundred-percent likelihood of being photographed by a civilian or caught by Jernigan, he would have leaped into the air like a gasping fish into water.

Some little kid and his mother, tourists, most likely, came down the sidewalk amid the general flood of people. Vlad flashed his eyes red and scowled at the urchin, who cried and grabbed his mother's skirt.

Vlad continued on his way, feeling a little better.

XXX

The receptionist at the Cray Building was a young, dark-haired woman named Mary who was sick and tired of rich, pompous jerks and loved to prove it, especially since her father-in-law owned the building. She was trying to make a Cat's Cradle out of a long rubber band when an angry looking moron in a black suit with silver hair and a pear-shaped head stormed through the revolving doors, tracking the street filth onto the newly cleaned carpets. Mary grinned inwardly.

"I'm here for an appointment with Dr. Jernigan," he snapped.

Mary groaned loudly and sat up in her little stool. She blinked leisurely, hardly keeping a triumphant smile off her face as the man growled slightly in his throat. "D'ya have an appoin'ment?" Rich jerks just hated stupid receptionists, Mary happened to know.

"Yes," he hissed. "Yes I do. Can you tell me what floor he's on?"

"Hmm." Mary rolled her eyes up to stare at the ceiling. "Floor?" She dug the directory sheet out from a drawer in her desk and glanced over it, finding the name almost immediately. "I don't see it. Can you spell it for me?"

She could hear his teeth grinding. "J-E-R-N-I-G-A-N. Jernigan."

"Nope, I'm still not seeing… Uh… Oh yeah! Here it is." She smiled a well-practiced 'ah-ha!' "Floor twenty five."

"Thank you," he growled. Mary waited until Mr. Grumpy was safely stowed in the elevator before breaking out in laughter.

XXX

Vlad strode over to the elevators and punched the up button. It being the middle of the afternoon, the elevator—already on the ground floor—dinged immediately and welcomed him happily into its scarlet-carpeted interior. The cool lighting and professional interior gave him some time to collect himself for the meeting. It was New York, after all; hopefully this kind of tardiness happened all the time. Besides, the products provided by his own company were unique. Nobody else came close to D.A.L.V., Inc. in the spectral department, mostly because nobody else had contacts in the Ghost Zone.

And yet, any way he sliced it, this wouldn't look good. Vlad frowned. He would definitely have to go beat up that pet store clerk after this, and that incompetent cabbie, if he could find him.

The elevator opened and let him out into a professional hallway. Vlad wandered up and down the halls for a moment before finding the meeting room. He pushed the door open to see Jernigan, legs crossed leisurely on the conference table.

"You're late," he muttered, looking up sharply from a folder.

"I know. My apologies. This city can be unpleasant if you're unfamiliar with it."

Jernigan laughed. "Indeed it can."

They exchanged some more mandatory small talk. Vlad kept his guard up. This part was where the sharks merely circled. Eye the victim, look for the weak points in their wallets.

After a polite amount of strategic small-talk, Jernigan went in for the first strike. "Where are my products, Mr. Masters."

Vlad didn't miss a beat. "A momentary disruption in our suppliers. That's all. You'll have them next week."

"Your company has had quite a few of these 'disruptions' lately."

Vlad's mouth tightened. "When one works off the grid, certain unplanned accidents are inevitable."

"Well they'd better become less inevitable, or my company is going to find itself another supplier for ectoplasmic controllers."

"Don't kid me," Vlad scoffed. "There are no other suppliers."

Jernigan raised an amused eyebrow. "Then you _haven't_ heard of the Fentons."

Amazement, anger, and shock flew through him at once. Good thing Vlad was familiar with flexible honesty. "You don't want the Fentons. They're strictly research."

"That's not what I've been hearing." Jernigan stood up, adjusting his sport-jacket. "Amity uses their gadgets frequently enough. Get me my products or I'm hiring them."

Just keep smiling, Vlad thought. "You won't be disappointed."

XXX

He grumbled to himself as he left the Cray Building. He couldn't believe this. Here he was, Vlad Plasmius, notorious supervillain, and he was being held accountable to the petty whims of the free market. It just wasn't fair. People were out to get him; that was the problem. If the city wasn't so filthy he wouldn't have been late, and if that adolescent demon spawn of Jack's hadn't thrown him off-schedule, there wouldn't have been a meeting to be late to in the first place.

Vlad shook himself, making a feeble attempt to loosen up in the open, noisy, gas-polluted air of New York. Maybe it would do him some good to wreak some good old-fashioned spectral havoc.

XXX

Pizza-face shouted frantically on the phone. "No, sir, I'm telling you, stuff is just flying all over the place and I don't know what to do! Arrgh!" The kid ducked as a hamster cage flew by his head.

"No!" he shouted after it. "Wallace and Candy, my poor Russian dwarf hamsters!" He winced as the cage hit the wall behind him, the phone snapping irritably at him all the while. Pizza-face sought refuge behind the counter. "No no, sir, I think they're fine, but—gah!" A squawking bird cage clipped his shoulder. "I think the store is _haunted_! What? … No I'm not an idiot, but I'm telling you—" The teen gasped as the other end clicked silent.

Vlad knew what he was doing was juvenile and petty. But he also knew it was extremely funny to watch a lanky, dopey, zit-faced seventeen-year-old cower behind a cheap store counter. He kept himself invisible and chucked a bag of bird food at the poor slob.

"Aaargh! Hey! Look, I don't know what's happening, but I'm sorry! Geez, I don't know what's going on and…"  
Vlad materialized in front of the kid and gave him the full evil-cackle, glowing-eyed, plasma-handed routine. Much better. The kid shrieked.

"No! Please! Here, I'll give you money, or… or anything, just don't hurt me."

"Sorry, kid, but—"

"I have pizza!"

"I— What?" Vlad stopped the act long enough for the kid to explain.

"I just got a pizza… it was going to be my lunch, but you could have a piece."

Pizza-face had pizza? "What kind of pizza?"

The kid looked like he was about to pass out from shock. "Uh… Pepperoni, I think."

Vlad didn't usually get offered free pizza on his little spook trips. He hadn't eaten that particular lower-class food in several months, actually. But then again, he _did_ like pepperoni pizza, and New York pizzas _were _supposed to be among the best… "Is it good pizza?"

The kid nodded eagerly. "From my favorite place!" He pulled the box from under the counter. "See? It's Uno's original." He opened the lid to let the ghost smell it. Hopefully its meaty, cheesy aroma would prove irresistible and the ghost would take it and leave him alone.

Vlad rubbed his chin. "Hmm…" He pulled off a slice, the mozzarella coming off in strings from the rest of it. It smelled delicious. "Alright." The kid blinked, hardly believing his luck. "I'm still going to have to let all your animals go, just to round things off nicely."

"Wait, what? No!" Pizza-face dropped the carton on the counter and dashed after the animals, which Vlad had released with a flick of his wrist. They bounded everywhere, howling, screeching, bawling… The birds flew all over the place, and the cats and dogs set up an unholy racket. Several began scrapping with one another Vlad smiled and bit into his pizza. Mmmm…. It was good. The sauce tasted home-made, and the crust might stand as a pastry by itself. He heard a soft purr at his elbow, near where the kid—who was still running around in a desperate frenzy—had dropped the pizza box.

A small, calico cat crouched over the box, its pink tongue flicking daintily over the cheese.

"You like pizza, kitty?" Vlad leaned back against the counter, picking off a piece of pepperoni for Kitty's enjoyment. "Me too."

The clerk bounded up, gasping, to the counter and snatched at the kitty. Vlad's eyes widened, but he didn't move to help one organism or the other. He watched the ensuing drama with interest.

The Evil Clerk reaches for Kitty, who is still obliviously licking the succulent grease from the pizza. Kitty feels herself being picked up and immediately understands that she is being separated from her lunch. Kitty shreds Evil Clerk's face. Evil Clerk drops wise-ass Kitty and shrieks, clutching desperately at his eyes.

Kitty resumes licking succulent grease.

Vlad chuckled, letting Kitty settle herself before reaching out to stroke her back. Kitty turned around suspiciously, giving his glove a soft warning nip, but when it was obvious that no more attempts would be made to remove her from her food, she began to purr quiescently.

"How much for this cat?" asked Vlad. He had never liked pets much, but he was getting good vibes from Kitty.

"AAAAAARRGH! My fricken' EYES!" screamed the clerk.

"Hm. Alright. Well, I'll leave forty bucks on the counter for you." Vlad finished off his own slice and tucked Kitty one arm and the pizza box under the other, making sure Kitty could still reach her food.

He phased out of sight and passed into the street, leaving that repulsive teenager to deal with the unholy mess. Vlad would fly home. It would be extra work for him, but it was well worth it to avoid the seething mass of humanity below. And he wasn't planning on sticking Kitty in a luggage compartment. Vlad checked his watch. He should be fine. Might even be able to catch a poker tournament on the television.

"Do you like poker, Kitty?"

Kitty resettled herself in his arms, turning away from the cold wind blowing past them, bundling up to the pizza and purring contentedly in the warmth of Vlad's body heat.

All things considered, Vlad decided that his horrible day in that horrible, grungy city hadn't turned out to be quite so bad after all.


	2. Color Coated Kitty

A/N: Thanks to all reviewers! This story is no longer a one-shot, it's a series of mini-stories! For this segment, just pretend it's the Fourth of July. I promise it will be worth teh funniness in ze following story!

Color Coated Kitty

By JadeRabbyt

Vlad woke up with a cat on his face.

Most experienced cat owners are familiar with this comical habit of their feline friends, but Vlad was not an experienced cat owner. Vlad was not even a mildly enthusiastic cat owner. Perhaps it was true that he _did_ like it when Kitty jumped up on his lap while he was reading the paper in the morning, and he couldn't say that there was anything to criticize about the feline's divine purring, but still. Waking up with the thing drowsing on his face, _breathing cat hair up his **nose**_, did cross a line somewhere.

Fortunately for Kitty, Vlad woke up gradually that morning. Had it been otherwise, had he woken up to the shuddering slam of a door or the sharp crack of a splintering tree branch, Kitty and Vlad Plasmius might have come to blows. However, as Vlad grumbled mild curses and rolled Kitty onto a side pillow, Kitty seemed barely aware of the danger that she had just narrowly managed to escape. Likewise with her master. Vlad eventually swung his feet out of bed, and after a couple seconds of standard early-morning amnesia, he stood up and stretched with a groan. Kitty ambled over his wrinkled covers and stole the warm spot where he had been sleeping.

Vlad scowled, adjusting his night robe. "Stupid animal." He'd have to remember to make sure his bedroom door was shut in the evenings.

Kitty ignored him entirely and went back to sleep. Vlad quirked a smile and went to get ready for work.

XXX

Getting ready for work always put Vlad in a good mood, but today it put him in an especially good, snide, snickering mood. It was the Fourth of July, which meant the saps who worked for his company got the day off. It also served as a very pleasant reminder to Vlad of his omnipotence over the little people as the majority shareholder of the D.A.L.V. Group. He reasoned it this way: When his worker drones got a day off, it meant they missed an entire eight- or nine-hour day of labor. When Majority Shareholder Vlad Masters got a day off, it meant he didn't even have to bother booting up his computer and checking his email. Vlad did visit his workshops occasionally, but generally the average weekday's business could be wrapped up in ten minutes through the internet.

Being the industrious guy he was, Vlad decided he'd do some voluntary overtime and check his email anyway. Only one message popped up on his laptop, and it wasn't a Nigerian scam. For some reason he'd been seeing a lot of those lately. He suspected that the Fenton brat had put him on some kind of mailing list, and it had really been getting on his nerves lately. Vlad opened the message that was not a Nigerian scam and sat back with his coffee, leaning his elbows on the mahogany table.

"PARTY TONITE!" screamed the email. "TALK SMACK ABOUT BLUE-COLLAR NITWITS WITH HUNDREDS OF OTHER INDUSTRY LEADERS!"

This would be Yeman Harding's Fourth of July party invite.

While Vlad manufactured things that could affect ghosts directly, zappers and stingers and whatnot, Yeman specialized in detection instruments. The small but perceptible difference in gadgets made them associates rather than rivals. Yeman had a lively business and an extraordinarily big mouth, but with some under-the-table government contracts he could afford it easily enough. They all could. Nobody on the guest list made the Fortune 500, but most of them—defense contractors, car manufacturers, a couple airline execs, and other odds and ends of the government moochers—got along fine. Better than fine, even without Vlad's unique powers.

Whether or not they were good party company was another matter altogether. But Vlad had already sent in his RSVP, and he looked forward to seeing Yeman again. Plus, business for him had taken a small but nasty drop, and it couldn't hurt to put in some face time before the quarterly report was published. Valerie Gray was due for some more toys, and Vlad wanted his people well paid and well motivated.

XXX

Later that evening, Vlad pushed open his garage door only to have Kitty dart through it ahead of him, losing herself among his four cars. Vlad ground his teeth and barked for her to get right back here NOW, but Kitty apparently needed a hearing aid of some sort because she didn't respond in the slightest. Which forced Vlad to change to his better half so he reach get under his Mercedes, where she ALWAYS hid EVERY time this happened, and dunk her back in the house.

That small matter attended to, he jumped into his favorite car, the Rolls, and buzzed off to the party with the engine purring like a kitten. A couple times he thought he saw something in his back window, but closer inspection revealed nothing.

XXX

Yeman greeted him with a hearty smile and a firm handshake, his slightly crooked teeth glimmering in the dim light, his slicked back black hair meeting a blue pin-stripe suit at the collar. "Vladimir Masters! Great to see you. We were afraid you weren't coming." A smile flicked onto his face, belying a possibly sublegal knowledge of Vlad's lagging business operations.

"And I heard one of your fool-proof detectors blew some old lady's hand off in India." Vlad returned the smile. "We all have off days."

"That hand was set to explode anyway." Yeman led Vlad up the path to his own mansion, a tall white six-bedroom affair decorated with cherubs and Roman colonnades. The first day he'd bought it, Yeman had drawn an elegantly curled moustache on the white marble angel face above the front enterance because 'he thought it would be funny.' Vlad had seen him lead fellow executives through that door, and had answered, on their inquiry, that it was an Italian angel with an Italian mustache. Yeman always said it with such a perfectly straight face that his guests could only nod uncomfortably and change the subject.

They passed under the Italian angel and into the foyer, where a barman politely asked what they wanted. Vlad put in his order, listening as Yeman explained how an old Indian woman's hand could have ever possibly been 'set to explode.'

"There's a compound that's been commonly thought to be associated with spontaneous combustion."

It was a good thing Vlad hadn't gotten his drink yet, or he would have spewed it all over the floor in his laughter. "You can't blame your explosive products on a phenomenon that doesn't exist!"

Yeman looked over the edge of his own champagne at Vlad, his green eyes narrowing. "You mean like ghosts don't exist? Ghost thieves?"

"What do you mean by that?"

Yeman laughed, draining his drink and setting it down on the table. "Nothing, old man. Don't worry about it. In any case," he said, wiping his hands together. "We've known about a certain chemical for quite a while that pretty much explains the whole spontaneous combustion thing."

Vlad took the drink proffered by the waiter, who scurried off to pamper somebody else. "Is that so?"

"Quite so. It's called inositol, or vitamin 'B' ten. The body produces the stuff naturally, but it's chemically similar to nitroglycerine."

Interesting, but also a transparent weasel maneuver. "I see. So your defective product _exploded_ because she took too many _vitamins_?"

Yeman snickered. "That's right. You wait. Vitamins will be the death of us all."

Vlad couldn't help laughing as Yeman's angular face split into a sneaky, V-shape grin.

Most people liked Yeman. Publicly, he treated life like a lap dance show to which he held a backstage pass. Privately, his treatment of anything was anybody's guess. He got respect without being respectable; he held animal parties without the baseness of animalism. He was a brazen frat boy with a multi-million dollar empire. Nobody understood him, but everybody liked him.

Before Vlad could pick up the conversation, his animated acquaintance had disappeared to greet the latest arrival to strut through his doors. It was too bad, because Vlad had begun to realize that just about everybody else in the room was an obnoxious jerk. Vlad did the only thing he could think of: he grabbed another drink and drifted over to a cluster of airline executives discussing Homeland Security.

"—and then, and then…" The fat storyteller paused, his cheeks reddening with suppressed chuckles. "And then they made this poor guy—he's about twenty or so, right? Perfectly nice guy. Anyway, turned out he had this big brass belt buckle. So they make him take it off. Right? Right?" The crowd around him nodded at Fatty. Yes, that's right. Who knew what he was talking about, but they'd be darned if he wuzn't right right right about it. "So," Fatty continued. "He takes off the belt and _his pants fall off!_ And he's got these got lil' teddy bears on his boxers! _Teddy bears!_" The group roared with laughter. Vlad drained his glass. He was almost happy to see Jernigan's sneering face appear in front of him.

"Thank you for finally filling my order."

Vlad gestured magnanimously. "It was my pleasure. Congratulations on finally exorcising your vice president. How many months did that take? Three?" Jernigan colored. "Oh well," Vlad sighed. "You got it done eventually, and that's what counts."

Jernigan said something unprintable and stalked off into the crowd. Vlad snickered to himself and turned to see what the waiter wanted. "Yes?"

"Did you bring a ah, an animal to the party, sir?"

Animal? "No." Not that he knew of, anyway.

"I see." The waiter looked down at the floor, as if the subject might cause him to burst with embarrassment at any moment. He might have been more at ease if Vlad had brought the state police along. "Well, animal ah, erm, 'traces' have been found in your back seat."

Vlad kept a fixed expression. "What sort of traces?"

"The ah, um, well, _fecal_ traces, sir." The waiter wiped sweating hands on his pants. Vlad checked if anybody was eavesdropping, and through some mix of luck and divine mercy, nobody was. "We think it might have been a cat. It does have that rank kind of um, 'cat' smell."

"Fantastic. Please tell me you've at least managed to locate it."

Waiter shook his head. "No, not so far, sir."

Thus Vlad's attention turned from his companions' character—or lack thereof—to the issue of what he'd do to that furry little menace once he caught it. Vlad had been entirely too lenient with Kitty; he could see that now. He'd never liked pets for exactly that reason, after all. Every time you got halfway around to really liking them, they'd go and poop on your Rolls Royce, or something. Naturally, the interior of that car was of the highest-quality leather, too. He'd never hear the end of it back at the dealer's.

As furious as he was with Kitty, Vlad figured the best thing to do would be to find her and arrange for her to be trapped in one of Yeman's more obscure bathrooms. At least that way he could keep the animal from causing him any more trouble. To this end, Vlad wandered nonchalantly from room to room, group to gossiping group. He chatted and exchanged ideas with men in ties while he snuck discreet glances under tables, behind planters filled with ferns or small trees, and among the feet of those milling about the rooms. It was a shame because he'd just started to meet the more enjoyable kinds of people, but of course he couldn't enjoy them because his brazenly colored calico cat was wandering around _just waiting_ to ruin his night.

The sky grew black and starless under the glaring lights of the mansion and the city nearby, and Vlad still hadn't caught sight of Kitty. Yeman sidled up to him and put another drink in his hand. "Fireworks start soon." He grinned broadly. "I pulled out all the stops for this little show. The techies tell me it'll make history."

"I always did enjoy fireworks." With everybody looking up, nobody would be looking down at any wandering kitties.

Yeman slapped his back. "Doesn't everybody? There's not a man alive who doesn't like to watch a good old fashioned explosion." Vlad allowed that was true. Yeman chuckled, not about to let Vlad's mood infringe on his own jolly disposition. "Well, enjoy the party. Fireworks in the backyard in a couple minutes."

"I'll be there." And Vlad was. Deciding that he'd spent enough of his time looking for the cat, he managed to forget about that dumb animal long enough to actually settle in with some fellow ecto-industrialists and enjoy himself, swapping stories of ghosts and inventions with the assembled social pod. One of them had just begun work on a handgun that would split the 'soul' of the ghost from its plasmic powers, a device which Vlad thought might come in useful once it finished up its beta phase. Shortly enough some bells rang in the courtyard, and he followed the general herd of people out into the backyard.

The backyard sat on the top of a hill, providing an expansive view of the flat farmlands and verdant woodlands beyond. A fountain sat in the middle of a circular walkway paved with brick and colored sea glass, its center filled in with gleaming marble tile. A large space of grass separated this sizeable fixture from the trimmed hedges and flowerbeds beyond. By this time of night, the garden was cast in darkness, and the dim twilight brought the stars and the glow of the farmlands below into focus.

The first fireworks went up with a whistle and a flash, bursting into white and red flowers over the dome of the sky. No matter how many times he saw them, Vlad never had lost his childhood fascination with fireworks, and neither had any of the others. Another series flew up trailing glowing white powders of light, bursting into the shape of a dollar sign and an American flag. The guests laughed and clapped at that. Fizzlers and thunderers, starflowers and screaming flares brushed against the night and cast the enamored faces below in glows of royal blue, brilliant scarlet, searing white, lime green and soft lavender. And there, sitting on the very top dry part of an abstract sculpture in the middle of the fountain, Vlad Masters spotted Kitty.

He was mortified. He didn't have a shadow of a guess on how to get Kitty down from there before anybody else noticed. The darkness helped, but eventually somebody would remark on the furry, quiescent shape squatting on the flat top of the harsh granite sculpture.

If Kitty had any idea of the turmoil she was causing Vlad, she gave no sign of it. The cat held stock-still, her eyes fixed up at the sky and the fireworks it hosted. The colors played across the striped patches of golden fur decorating her back and legs, shimmered off the black background, and stained the soft white on her breast and underbelly with whatever color happened to be exploding at the time. Her slitted green eyes followed the shooting rockets up to their apex and watched them detonate, ears pricked, posture impeccably alert.

Vlad waited for somebody to say something, but nobody did. If they saw the cat, they must have assumed it was Yeman's. He wasn't exactly known for pets, but he wasn't exactly known for animal cruelty either. So it was entirely probably that he might have had a cat who liked to sit on the high, dry part of the fountain sculpture and snooze or watch fireworks. Nobody noticed the cat until it started to glimmer.

A streak of white light shot from Kitty's tail to her head. The guests murmured, and fingers were pointed. Yeman's brow furrowed as he declared that no, it wasn't his cat, and the guests oohed and aahed as more streaks of white light flashed faster across Kitty's multicolored coat. Vlad began moving discreetly towards the dark gardens, where he might change unmolested, but what happened next gave him pause.

Kitty began to shimmer like a television with bad reception. Against the backdrop of the fireworks, which were still exploding in the background, the effect was spectacular. Her coat shifted and swirled with colors, the image refining into something far more fascinating, mutating into its own holographic explosion of colors untold, lights that seemed to bright to be real, red explosions the color of blood and streaks of blue darker than any sapphire, bursts of green like teardrop emeralds and slashes of purple which no royal eyes had ever beheld. The colors mingled but never mixed, a Mondrian painting made fluid and screamingly vivid in the dark of twilight against the humans' own fantastic display of color and light. Several present recalled dimly the Hubble pictures of clumping, brilliant nebulae and dust clouds as they looked at Kitty the Supernatural, and as the finale arrived it nearly blinded the guests with the sheer visceral purity of its booming sounds and colors, the cat and the fireworks impeccably synchronized. The audience held its breath in slack-jawed silence before erupting in wild applause.

Vlad stared up at his pet in amazement. Kitty shimmered like a TV and showed her normal fur again, immediately turning to lick her shoulders. Every guest waited for somebody to explain something, but nobody did. Confusion struck. This was not a crowd to let a miracle go uncredited, but at the moment Vlad stepped forward to claim his ownership, so did Jernigan.

"This is a rare specimen captured by me and my men during an expedition in the Amazon. Lovely, don't you think?" He beamed like he'd caught the world in his hand.

Vlad thought his teeth were too bright and longed to relieve him of a couple of them. "You credit-stealing nitwit, that's _my_ animal!"

The crowd OOOooooooh'ed, wrestling match style.

Jernigan tipped his nose in the air and laughed. "Nice try. That animal's mine."

"I'd like to see you take it." There followed an awkward silence in which it was tacitly agreed by all concerned that, no matter how valuable the prize, nobody was going to go fountain-hopping in an expensive suit in front of all their peers.

Yeman had been watching the performance from a second floor patio. "This should be good." Vlad had an impressive arsenal of arrogance, but Jernigan had better pull. He wondered distantly who would win. Maybe they'd get in a fight, get thrown in jail, and he could claim the cat. Yeman wouldn't mind that at all, but he kind of hoped that Vlad would win this one. Jernigan was a Jerkagain.

"I'm telling you that's my cat! I've got the—" Vlad cut himself short. He'd bring up the ordure in his car if it became absolutely necessary, but not before that point.

"You've got the what?" Jernigan snapped. "I've got data logs from every expedition I've ever undertaken." Logs that, his smirk implied, could be doctored effortlessly.

Kitty had squatted down on all fours and was watching the bright human eyes below. The fountain tinkled on the statue below her.

Vlad had an excellent idea. "If she's your cat, call her!"

"You can't be serious. It's a valuable specimen I brought out just for this occasion. Besides, you know as well as anybody that no cat comes when it's called." The certainty had disappeared from his voice.

"Vlad, you call her!" Yeman shouted.

He was only too happy to oblige. "Kitty!" He patted his pants legs. "Yum yum!" As humiliating as that can-opener call was, it was worth the relief that flooded him when Kitty perked up, whiffed the air—probably catching wind of the orderves he'd eaten earlier—and stepped off the fountain to claw her way up Vlad's expensive suit and wrap herself around his shoulders. Vlad gave himself a moment to bask in the joy that Kitty actually _had_ respected him as some kind of authority, even if she still felt cheated about getting no food, then he turned to the equally important business of taunting the strawberry-colored Jernigan.

"Oh, so I guess this means it's not your cat after all."

His finger shot out. "He… you… this is a theft!" Yeman's quiet laughter drifted down from the patio above. Jernigan whirled. "I can produce irrevocable evidence—"

Vlad nodded, caressing Kitty's head with his fingers. "Of course you can."

The laughter rolled around the courtyard, growing from a light chuckle to a hearty roar as it became obvious that Dr. Jernigan, one of the stiffest, most anal people in business, had officially got served. He merely smiled, his eyes bright dagger-points, and excused himself.

Vlad thought he'd take a Rolls full of cat excrement over what just happened to that guy any day. Kitty purred at his ear.

Later that night, with Kitty safely ensconced in a borrowed animal carrier, half the party stopped by to discuss future orders with Vlad. Admiration of his cat was universal. People couldn't describe the experience itself, but comments ran along the lines of 'absolutely incredible.' By the end of the party, Vlad figured his business had a one or two year boom to look forward to, and the first thing he'd do with that money was build Kitty her own custom playroom.

Later on the drive home, Vlad glanced at the carrier sitting in the passenger seat. The car still smelled of cleaning products, but he didn't even mind that. Her display had been incredible, and it amazed him that he hadn't discovered the talent sooner. Kitty was certainly a rare find indeed, and even though the smart thing to do would be to stuff her in some kind of tube and run every test he could think of on her, the mere thought of such a thing horrified him, and the fact that something had actually horrified the great and terrible Vlad "Plasmius" Masters made him uncomfortable. He stole a glance through the wires of the cage, where Kitty slept curled in a ball, her chest rising and falling gently.

Vlad dismissed his concerns. There was nothing wrong with refusing to bother a perfectly nice animal, even if it could be the key to untold millions. What did he need with millions when he already had a couple billion, anyway?

Truth be told, he did kind of have a soft spot for her. No doubt he'd think differently the next time he stepped out of bed and onto Kitty's tail, but for the moment, Kitty was getting fresh turkey and a playroom.

* * *

A/N: Review, my pretties! If you have ideas for the future adventures of Vlad and Kitty, let me know. If not, feel free to share your own cat's (mis)adventures, or just leave a friendly word! 


	3. Doom via Chia

A/N: Behold! Your harassment has come to fruition! I wasn't actually planning on doing another one of these until inspiration hit, but you guys just begged me so much (yes, I'm talking to YOU FullMetal :)) that I figured I could rap out a little something. Just to let y'all know, I am planning on tossing Danny in here at some point. This installment is a little more homey than the others, but never fear, for I shall deliver massively squeeful action adventuring soon enough.

Doom via Chia

By JadeRabbyt

Vlad flipped up the visor and wiped his brow. He'd almost completed the repairs on his ghost portal, though it had taken him an unreasonably long time to do it. The thing about stealing equipment, he thought as he set the welder on a bench, was that you had to remember to steal the manual as well. In the case of ghost-hunting devices, you had to remember to pump the owners for information on how to take care of it, since most of the Fentons' stuff was too uncommon and specialized to come with manuals.

Unfortunately, he had to learn both those lessons the hard way. After stealing blueprints for and assembling the ghost portal, Vladimir Masters hadn't had the slightest clue how to take care of it. Did it need oil? Polish? A foot massage? He didn't know, and by the time he knew what it needed, the thing had already broken down. Like now. Apparently he'd been powering it with the wrong kind of plasma, and the main engine drives had frozen up. He hated getting his hands dirty, but Skulker was out of town and it wasn't exactly like he could just call the electrician to fix it. Fortunately, he'd just about finished up repairs. Vlad left the lab for the upper floors. He wanted some lunch.

Kitty met him at the top of the stairs, meowing as Vlad ascended. He brushed her head with the tips of his fingers. "Good Kitty." She meowed again, softer and longer, a feline noise of gracious impatience as she followed him into the kitchen.

Vlad zapped leftover filet mignon for himself and opened a can of gunk for Kitty. She took one look at her greasy brown meal and ignored it entirely. Vlad leaned against the counter, bit off a chunk of the juicy beef and chewed thoughtfully, still thinking of the portal. There had to be a better way to maintain it, other than trial and error. A call to Jack with a nice excuse might do the trick. Maddie might even pick up the phone. In fact, she'd probably have to be the one to answer his questions, since Jack wasn't exactly the world's brightest bulb. Vlad would enjoy a chance to talk to her again.

Something pressed lightly against his shins. He looked down to see Kitty standing on her hind legs, her two front paws reaching up on his pants. Her oval eyes were stretched wide open to show her green irises, and her slitted black pupils were centered right on his mignon. "Mrrrrreow."

Vlad gestured with a fork to the cat dish. "You already have your food."

This comment did nothing to change Kitty's mind. She continued to give him that same expectant stare, and looking at the crud in her bowl, Vlad couldn't blame her. He cut off a small chunk of his meat and tossed it in her dish, hoping she'd eat the rest of its contents and stop bothering him. Because he definitely was not sharing any more of his meat. He paid a chef a small fortune to prepare such luscious meals for him.

A moment later, Kitty was back, leaning the soft white pads of her paws against Vlad's shin. "No Kitty." He shook his leg. She lost her balance and dropped to all fours. She meowed loudly, showing her teeth and pulling her cheeks—lips—whatever cats had, to show her gums. She moved to his side, directly under his meat-bearing fork, and mrowed expectantly.

Vlad sighed. He cut the last piece of beef in two, eating one piece himself and tossing the rest to his Kitty.

XXX

Vlad put his welder down for the second time at six o'clock that night, just when it was beginning to get dark outside. He figured he'd do an hour or two of reading, do a half hour of research on ghosts or machinery or something like that, then head on over to the internet nooze to see if there was anything worth stealing. After that, he'd call it a night.

In pursuit of such noble ends, he took the stairs from his lab to the living room. One wall held towering bookcases, and the other was hung with paintings. The third wall had been fitted with arching windows that gave an excellent view of the surrounding hills and the not-so-distant city of Green Bay. Vlad walked to the bookshelves and grabbed a book at random. _Ectomagic: Theory and Practice_. He'd gotten it several years ago in a Chinese book shop. It was supposed to describe ghost powers in detail, but a drugged-up Oriental medicine man had written it, so Vlad didn't give it too much credit. It did have some fairly interesting myths and fables, so he sat down in the red felt armchair and started reading. Ten or fifteen minutes later, Kitty came along and jumped in his lap. She did that sometimes, and Vlad would stroke her white, black, and brown-splotched fur while he read. They were deep in the midst of this evening ritual when something crashed upstairs.

Vlad didn't pay any attention to it until something crashed again. Something that sounded like the splintering of wood. "Hey! Who's up there?"

Nobody answered him. Kitty, who had almost fallen asleep, raised her head from her paws and pricked up her ears.

Vlad sighed and stood up, brushing the irritated Kitty from his lap as he changed to his ghost form. He growled to himself, irritated. Every once in a while something like this would happen. Some idiotic ghost, having heard of the powerful devices of Plasmius, would try to break in and steal something. Generally the alarms went off to warn him of the thief, but the bunglers could be clumsy, although they usually weren't stupid enough to make this much noise. Vlad approached the stairs to the upper floors cautiously, reminding himself not to worry. He had enough power to fry just about anything troublesome in the Ghost Zone, but nobody liked to have their home invaded.

"This is your last warning! Show yourself."

Predictably, silence answered him once again. Vlad frowned and turned invisible, whisking through the halls and stairwells. He got to the third floor before anything unusual appeared, but what he finally spotted was _very _unusual.

A small green thing that looked like a plant was sitting in the middle of the red-carpeted hallway. Vlad clicked on the light switch, keeping his distance from the green shae. There were huge gouges in the walls on either side of the thing, just as if a wrecking ball had swung back and forth. He didn't want whatever had made those dents to come his way.

As the hall light hit the green thing, it hissed and snarled. Vlad didn't know what to make of it. It didn't move, but it had _snarled _at him. This had to be a trick. Somebody had planted this thing in his carpet and taken off, and it was some kind of ectoplasmic time bomb. Problem was, it didn't look like a time bomb. It looked like a Chia Pet. A Chia Pet of a beetle, from the looks of it. There was no pot which held it, but Vlad could clearly see the tiny sprouts of grass that made up its surface. They shimmered with strange colors of sea-green and teal, and it continued to growl mouthlessly at him.

Whatever it was, the thing had invaded his house and maybe smashed up his walls, so it was history. Vlad fired up a plasma beam and blasted it. The green thing roared, and something bludgeoned the whole side of his face. Vlad was thrown against the hallway's back wall, and he saw that the innocent green plant had sprouted enormous tendrils that had begun to smash up everything they could lay hold of. They huge tendrils crackled with electrical colors, leaving bright streaks across his vision as the plant lifted itself and lunged forward, its shape hidden behind twenty or thirty whipping vines. Vlad turned intangible just as one crashed toward him, but it somehow managed to smack him anyway, sending him crashing through the floors. The whole mansion had begun to shake with its rage. This thing was going to leave him one nasty repair bill.

Vlad split himself in four and sent one copy out to find Kitty. Another headed for the thing, to try and keep it occupied if not contained, and the last two headed for the lab and its guns.

He found Kitty without much trouble. She had been trotting up the stairs, drawn to the source of the racket. "No Kitty! Not safe." He grabbed her and dumped her in the only safe, distant, contained place he could think of: the laundry room. It was in the basement and walled on three sides with concrete, about the size of a park's public restrooms. He set her down and went to join the fight, but the plant had too many arms. Whatever the guns shot away, it grew back. Whatever he struck it with, it either deflected or electrified, and the presumed plant had slowly begun to demolish his home from the top down.

Back in the laundry, Kitty meowed loudly and vainly at the heavy wooden door. She crouched at each thump from above, ears flattened against her small skull, her eyes darting over the ceiling. She got up and scratched at the door, meowing for Vlad, who was, at the moment, very much occupied. The shaking got closer and louder, and finally Kitty leaned the whole right side of her body against the door. Slowly, colors of all shades began to flash and dance over her coat, accelerating to an epileptic frenzy. The wood of the door turned red and flickered with a small, controlled flame. Kitty dashed out through the hole she had burned in the laundry room door.

Upstairs, two of Vlad's copies had already succumbed, and the plant was still going strong. It had smashed its way halfway through the second floor, and he could hear the beams creaking and groaning in other parts of the house. He was hitting it with everything he had, but he couldn't get close enough to the source of the tangled vines to do any significant damage. And suddenly, things got worse.

"Hssssssssssss!" She had turned colors, the same as she had done at Yeman's party. They burned much more brightly, now.

"Kitty!" Hadn't he locked her up? That stupid animal would be crushed, colors and all!

She hissed again at the plant, which, oddly enough, responded to her noise. It screeched and flailed and ignored Vlad entirely, aiming its strikes at Kitty instead. As Vlad watched, she dodged the blows with almost precognitive ease, leaping farther and farther into the tangle until Vlad lost sight of her. The plant curled in on itself as Kitty raced into it. He floated motionless, spellbound, as the plant let out one last blood-curdling screaming shrieking pain-filled cry and sucked into itself entirely.

When it was gone, all that was left was beams of broken wood, the smell of lettuce, and a thin veil of dust from all the mess it had made of the house. And Kitty crouched in the middle of the hallway carpet, coughing little cat coughs. Vlad rushed over to her and turned human.

"Kitty? Kitty!" Her coat had returned to its normal colors but she didn't look good. Vlad had absolutely no idea what had just happened, but Kitty had made it happen. She'd saved him and his house, and he didn't want anything to happen to her.

She coughed and heaved, stretching out her neck as Vlad stood away and worried. He didn't know any vets, and with her dull coat and that bone-rattling cough, she definitely looked sick. By the time a vet had arrived—

Kitty gagged and coughed up a huge brown hairball. All over his carpet. It was a lumpy brown, poop-looking thing that sat in a pool of cat spit and stomach fluids.

She sat up, shook herself, and began to clean her front paw, perfectly well again.

Vlad didn't know whether to be furious, curious, or grateful. He still had no idea what Kitty had managed to do. He reached down and stroked her head, out of a lack of any other available reaction, and in the process he brought himself closer to the nasty hairball. Vlad tried to ignore it, but he it shimmered in the corner of his eye, and he took a closer look at it. Sure enough, the thing was shimmering, and with the colors of sea-green and teal. The colors of the monster. He looked up at Kitty, who continued to clean herself innocently. The plant had had strange coloring, and so did his lovable little pet.

"You two know each other, Kitty?" Vlad didn't want to be dealing with this on a regular basis. Whatever that thing had been, Kitty had probably attracted it, but at least she had also managed to dispatch it. He would have to run some tests on the hairball, with Skulker's help. If that lion-bot was as good a hunter as he said he was, then he should know _something_ about creatures like these.

The other call he'd have to make would be to his building contractors. Vlad figured they should be rich off him by now, what with all the things that periodically exploded, misfired, or ran amok in his mansion. He went down to his living room—miraculously intact—and picked the book off his chair. The house was a little breezy, but the damage had been limited to the northwest wing, so it probably wouldn't collapse overnight. Vlad sank down in his chair, feeling the bruises on his legs and back as he put pressure on them. A couple minutes later Kitty trotted up and hopped back in his lap. Vlad staunchly refused to pet her.

"I can't have you drawing monsters into my house. You should be put on dry cat food for this little trick."

Kitty rubbed her cheek against his chest and purred, kneading his pants with her claws. Vlad might have been able to resist the accursed cat's charms if he hadn't just had two of his four butts kicked by the world's largest evil Chia Pet. He surrendered the use of one hand to scratch the fur at her neck.

If only the cat could talk. Where did she come from that there were such strange monsters and brilliant colors? He'd have to look into it. It shouldn't require any more than a blood sample from Kitty, and Skulker would probably be a big help in resolving things. Vlad was determined to look at the bright side of his house being demolished. There could be priceless technical inventions just waiting to be made. Maybe even something to impress Maddie. People loved shiny things. The phosphorescent colors might have some hypnotic powers.

Vlad looked down at the cat in his lap. Kitty was draped across his legs, laying on her side, exposing the soft white hair of her stomach to petting. Her chest rose and fell rhythmically as she breathed. Vlad picked up the book and read a little more, struggling to keep his eyes open as the blackness of the sky deepened, the stars glowing like gemstones through the big windows. His hand sagged. He should go up to bed, but the chair was really, really comfortable, perfect for napping, and Kitty was already settled in, and he was really tired from fighting that plant thing…

Vlad fell asleep, one hand hanging over the armrest and the other draped across his cat, snoring lightly under the glow of the stars.

* * *

A/N: Comments welcome! Remember, the more you guys squee at me, the more story thee shall see! 


	4. Pity the Pipsqueek

A/N: Hi everybody! Thanks fer all yer mah-velous reviews. And now! Your efforts are rewarded! Joy! I should say that this is mainly a set-up for the next chapter. I mean, c'mon, you know Maddie's gotta show up in this thing sooner or later, right? ;)

Pity the Pipsqueek

By JadeRabbyt

"But I already PAID the advance!" Vlad shouted. "I don't know why I don't switch firms. You people are as unmanageable as the very weather." He listened to the oiled voice on the other end of the line. Full of confidence, it spoke with the honeyed, pick-pocketing deviousness of one who knew that, come heck or high water, there was no way on this earth or any other you could avoid paying for his third vacation home.

"How can that possibly be a fair price. Come now, it's _wood_! And some metal, and maybe some marble here and there, but really. I'm not asking for a Roman chapel." The voice squealed and slipped like a penguin over a glacier, and with the same cool fluency. Vlad listened, a heavy scowl carved across his features. Kitty lay sprawled on her side atop the kitchen table next to him, ears perked as he stroked her fur. Vlad sat on the stool next to her and continued his disgruntled rumblings. Her calico fur stood out beautifully against the black-and-gray granite.

That was the funny thing, the kitchen table. The wacky decorating in the front room threw visitors for a loop, and the felt carpets and in-home theater left them awed, but somehow, they always expected something in the kitchen… other than a table with a phone hanging on the wall next to it. Granted, the table could send somebody to college and the phone was high-tech enough to double as a toaster, but that was beside the point. They didn't expect an array of cupboards, a small fridge, and a coffee maker, though of course the true bakeries were holed-up elsewhere in the mansion. Vlad liked to keep a small foraging space on hand, and Kitty in her wisdom had never made any objection. Kitchen tables with phones next to them were downright necessary, otherwise, where were you going to sit and read or eat or talk or glare at overdue bills while you also—and this was the critical bit—petted the cat?

"I've told you, I can't _get_ insurance!" Vlad listened, poised for the inevitable. "I can't tell you why the mansion keeps exploding. You are hired hands. Just fix it." He winced to discover that that snipe would cost him another hundred thou, due to the totally legitimate reason that the market price of redwood had very suddenly skyrocketed. Vlad massaged his forehead and growled, the phone away from his mouth for the moment. It wasn't that he couldn't afford it; it was just the principle of the thing. You didn't stay rich by letting every plumber swindle you. Kitty stared placidly up at him and blinked her golden eyes. Vlad winced as she sank his teeth in his distracted hand. He pulled away and concluded matters on the phone, to the extent that they could be concluded.

"It's time to feed you, I expect." Usually he had servants for such nonsense, but they'd all scampered away once the Chia monster had taken out half the roof, even though the surveyor had said the building was still sound. Vlad wasn't sure how much credit he attached to that statement, however, since he couldn't remember if he'd ever cheated that particular surveyor. He should really get a clerk to remember these things.

In any case, he considered, getting up for the cupboards, cats followed the food. Couldn't have a power-house like Kitty acquiring any ignoble loyalties to mere servants. He'd just gotten the small can of cat-chow—Kitty loathed the dry stuff, and let him know by defecating in his dress shoes—when the doorbell rang.

Vlad paused, marveling that enough of his house was intact that he could even hear the distant chiming. He glanced down at Kitty. She stared up at him, seated on the tile, her tail twitching in a way that just managed to suggest that there would be cat-poop in his future if he didn't get busy with that opener. Vlad went back to work. The doorbell chimed again. He'd just gotten the sharp tin lid off when something crashed and splintered.

A passing sailor would have applauded Vlad's inspirational exclamation.

Kitty's head turned on her body, following her foul-mouthed keeper as he sprinted from the kitchen and, she followed disinterestedly to see, turned ghost and jetted down through the floors. She trailed after, padding slowly, her ears twitching back.

Vlad rematerialized in his entrance hall, where a bleached-white man in a pitch black suit and cape was inspecting one of Vlad's really really rare signed footballs. Vlad couldn't stifle a little screech of terror as the burglar actually _opened his mouth and bit it_. With his teeth. In the hall behind him, it looked like a very small charge of plastic explosive had reduced the very heavy solid oak doors to toothpicks.

Vlad didn't waste any time gathering a big ole' blast of searing pink ectoplasm and letting the old man have it.

The geezer hissed and dropped the football, his eyes instantly flashing molten red. He leaped into the air, and the cloak seemed to get bigger, and his teeth, now fully bared, seemed to grow larger, and a little part of Vlad's brain said Holy Crap. His blast hadn't even left a mark, but as he watched, the man's arms reached out, the cape draping from them, and now the cape seemed leathery, and the pale white skin had flushed tombstone-gray, and the teeth gleamed like sharpened knives. Vlad threw up a shield and wished he could convince somebody to sell him house insurance.

The monster smashed against the pink sphere. Vlad let it down and quadrupled himself. He attacked the monster every way he knew how, but the bat-monster was invincible. Wherever he struck, it bludgeoned him back, and ever dodge and weave meant reducing another wall to gravel. He couldn't get his mind around it. This thing was a big bat, a humongous, evil flying rat, which had come out of nowhere, and now it was very properly 'whomping his tush.' In a matter of seconds he'd lost one clone, with the others on the way out, then he was alone against this monstrous vampiric Thing.

It loomed over him. Beaten within an inch of extreme unpleasantness, Vlad fizzled back to his human self, and it was just as it bent to sink those sharpened tusks into his neck that it froze.

And then it smiled.

It smiled the same way a tiger would if it had just seen its favorite toy. Something fwooshed and bubbled, and then there was a grinning old man in a black suite and cape staring, transfixed, at the staircase. Very carefully, Vlad manage to look around to see what the fuss was, and there on the staircase was Kitty, seated on the step like an empress on her throne. In spite of all his whacks and smacks and bites and bruises and near-death experiences, Vlad wanted to strangle that darn cat.

"Oh, it's you!" said the man in the cape, his arms dropping like noodles to his sides. "Beutus! I had no idea you lodged here." His old eyes sparkled.

Vlad managed to heft himself up on one elbow without screaming in agony. "What?" The man walked right by him, treading on Vlad's fingers as he did so. The man approached Kitty and genuflected—someone like him didn't bow.

"Might've touched meself up a bit if I'd thought you were here," he said, as if speaking to an attractive woman.

Vlad's eyes boggled. A very low growl had started bubbling in his chest, and now he let it out. "I don't know who you think you are, but this is my house and you will not speak with my cat!"

"Bit of a nutter, this one, yes?" the man whispered. Cats don't smile, but it seemed to Vlad that Kitty got pretty close. The man turned and stared authoritatively down at Vlad. "Now see here, servant. I'm here to visit the real master of this establishment… Mister Masters. If this is indeed where he stays." The man shook his head. "Though it's beyond me why such a powerful member of my clan would keep such a lazy slave."

Vlad's cheeks burned in arrogant fury. "YOU WERE TALKING TO MY CAT!" He almost managed to sit up.

"Forgive him," the man said to Kitty. "I hate to fuss, Beutus, but would you tell the keeper of this house that Vlad Dracula is here?"

Elegantly, Kitty walked to Vlad Masters and looked at him. Vlad grinned in the face of his guest's horror. "That's right, you old boob. I am Vlad Masters."

At a loss, he looked to Kitty, who returned his loss with a straight stare, and not even the world's first vampire can win a staring contest with a cat. "But… Why?" Kitty turned her head and licked her back, paying no more attention to either of them.

Vlad grinned nastily. "I gave her pizza, and her name is Kitty."

XXX

Ten minutes later Vlad the three of them had arrived at the kitchen, and Vlad was just finishing dumping the canned cat food into Kitty's bowl. His guest was sitting on a stool next to Kitty, who had reclaimed her leisurely place in the middle of the granite table. The stranger still hadn't introduced properly, but from what Vlad could gather from his conversation with Kitty, the man was the original Dracula. He'd come to the States on holiday from Transylvania, partly to see the magnificent new ghost-lord who shared his first name. Apparently, Vlad had proved a severe disappointment, but by Kitty he was charmed.

Vlad wrinkled his nose at the smell of the food. As soon as he could manage it without destroying his house, this old bat was out of here. Who did he think he was, Vlad's father? You couldn't expect that sort of thing of people. Besides, you could get more stealing from people than by terrifying them. At least _he'd_ never had a mob of townspeople with stakes chasing after him.

He tossed the ceramic food bowl on the table and sat across from Gramps. He watched, delighted, as she dipped her head to eat. "How do you two know each other, exactly?"

Dracula glanced up at him. "Oh, she used to be my cat. Together, we ruled civilization." His face darkened. "Then came the Nordic hordes… They stole my country and savaged my people."

Vlad considered this, trying to get it to ring a historical bell, but no matter how he spun it, that account of things made no sense whatsoever. "What a shame," he mused. "How are things now?"

Dracula reached out a hand and stroked Kitty's back lightly. He sucked his bottom lip, which was a truly disturbing sight to see. "They go… well. The local government somewhat… impedes my movement."

Vlad raised a brow, a hint of a smile crossing his face. "Dictatorship?"

"Democracy."

"Ah!" Vlad sat up. "I might be able to help you with that one. With any so-called 'people's government,' there's always strings to pull." Until Vlad got a working weapon against the original vampire, he might as well get on his good side. "What is it you're trying to do?"

Dracula folded his hands with restrained grace. "I have unusual dietary restrictions, as you may have heard."

"Oh." Vlad blinked. "Yes, that would be a tough one."

A thoughtful silence curled up between them. Kitty licked and smacked at her smelly wet cat food.

"I've had to make do with orphans."

Vlad gagged, but he tried to pass it off as a cough. "I have a meeting to go to." He stood up from his chair. "Very important. I'm not a terror of the night, but I'm a demon when it comes to paperwork, and people need cheating, so, you know… I'll see you when I get back. Feel free to go anytime you'd like." With that he scurried off to his garage, selected a Lotus, and made for the nearest flat stretch of road.

Vlad shook his head as the farms whirred past. "Orphans," he growled. Maybe the old man had been pulling his leg. He certainly had been smiling, a little. And he was a pretty good-humored guy, if it came to that. Vlad decided he must have been joking. He probably drank medical blood, or something. Yes, Vlad thought, passing a Corvette with ease, Let's hold that thought.

He was looking at this from entirely the wrong perspective. What he had was an ancient and very reliable source of power. Possibly two, if he counted Kitty. Vampires had all kinds of powers; there must be some way he could use Dracula.

Back at the mansion, Vlad walked into his breezy hall and looked up at the roof, which appeared deceptively sound. He smiled. Nothing had exploded! That was good. He continued on into the house, and eventually found his cat and his eccentric guest lounging on the posh couches of his study.

"Ah, Masters. I have to thank you for reuniting me with Beutus. She has taught me more than I could have imagined in our short time together."

Vlad didn't roll his eyes. Whatever. "I am happy to hear that. Now, I know you are full of ancient wisdom?"

The vampire squinted. "I might be, yes."

"Well," Vlad fidgeted. "I have heard thatyour kindhave a certain… natural sexual appeal to the opposite gender?"

"They might, yes."

"Can I ask how that works?"

Dracula shrugged, reaching up lazily to scratch the back of his head. "Don't see why not. It's just Elder Spice."

"Is that anything like Old—"

"Exactly like it. Just mix in about a teaspoon of mayonnaise, and that does it." He glared at Vlad. "But beware, you are forbidden from telling the mortals. That's one of our most treasured secrets, and I can disembowel a person in forty different ways." Kitty meowed. "Fourty-two. Sorry, Highness."

"Mayonnaise?" Vlad croaked. That was kind of disgusting.

Dracula waved his hand. "That's really all it is. Some kind of unique chemical reaction happens. We first discovered it when the Elvis died. He was eating a tuna fish sandwhich at the time."

"But I thought your ability was far older than Elvis."

Dracula rolled his eyes. "Oh, so now you're the Ancient One? You're the Original Vampire? Oh excuse me. Pipsqueek."

"Have it your way," Vlad grumbled.

"Don't even drink blood, you big fake."

Vlad clenched his fists. "Well she's MY cat, not yours, isn't she? I guess you must have sucked too much for her!"

Dracula sat up and yawned. "I can't stick around this dump of yours, anyway. I have a plane to California to catch. I'll be seeing you, Pipsqueek."

"I'm not a Pipsqueek!" Vlad shouted as Dracula retreated down the steps. "You're just a tired old fart that's hung around too long."

"And clean up this Hoboland before I get back, alright? At least have some proper sushi around here, or something." Somewhere, a door that hadn't been knocked down yet slammed.

Vlad ground his teeth. Give a guy a few hundred years on earth and he thought he knew everything. Rancid old codgers. Vampirism was probably the worst idea anybody had ever had. He was going to keep holy water in every room.

Kitty jumped off the couch and stalked out of the room.

XXX

The next day, Vlad put some mayonnaise in a popular bottle of cologne and shook it up until the fatty blob dissolved. He held the white bottle to eyelevel and sniffed, discovering a complete lack of aroma. He sprayed some on the back of his hand and smelled nothing.

Vlad lowered his hand to Kitty, who hissed and swiped her claws across it. Vlad yelped…

…and went to the mall, having decided that additional testing was in order. He'd glued several cheap dolls, random things picked out from the first toy store he'd seen, on benches throughout the mall, each with a different degree of cologne sprayed on them. Then he'd bribed the guards who watched the mall security cams. As he studied the tapes the crooked guards had recorded for him, Vlad noticed that the males who sat down by them didn't pay them any attention whatsoever, beyond the first curious glance to wonder what they were doing there.

The females, however, tended to spend a lot longer on the bench, never even glanced at the dolls, and seemed to clear their throats a lot. The severity of the symptoms corresponded to the amount of cologne he'd sprayed on the doll next to her.

Vlad grinned.

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A/N: OOOOO! MYSTERIOUS! What will happen next? Who does Vlad want to be his Valentine? GASP! Review, you Curious Georges!


End file.
